Octavia E. Butler Quotes

'Scary Movie' is very broad, and the reality is extreme.

I don't flinch from darkness, but I've always been bothered by what I call gore-nography.

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

I have a very high tolerance for gore and blood. I am, like, the perfect horror movie viewer because I do not get scared very easily. I can really stomach anything so, as a result, I have watched a lot of really disgusting stuff that I should probably never have seen.

People used to see things that disgusted them and say, 'I never want to see that again.' Now we've reached the point where we see things that are disturbing and revolting to us, but we want to see more and more of it.

Just because I'm showing somebody being disemboweled doesn't mean that I have to get heavy and put a message behind it.

The presentation of hard core pornography, brutality and shocking language, from what I hear, is leaving the public jaded and tired of this kind of film.

The language you are about to hear... is disturbing.

The smorgasbord of images now presented to us is getting bloodier. They're becoming more frequent - almost hourly.

I think the violence in 'The Hills Have Eyes' and 'High Tension' is much more traumatic than 'Piranha.'

Not many people realize this, but I'm a really squeamish guy. When I watch other horror films that are really over-the-top with their blood and guts, I cannot watch it.

In films of terror, it's often not about being graphic. Or if there is a graphic image, it's extremely swift. Everyone talks about the shower scene in 'Psycho,' but that's the only graphic scene in the entire film.

Most screen violence is tedious.

There's not a lot of music videos that are totally, totally disturbing.

The question I ask myself is: have I really just become a squeamish middle-aged man, or has something happened to the horror genre that shows a growing appetite for watching torture, or at least a desire to explore it on film? And if so, why would that be? I can't pretend I know. I just know I don't like it.

If a brutal scene is shown for no reason except to shock, then it is bad.

I don't want to just traffic in sensationalism or in mere blood.

Interestingly, although the 'Books of Blood' were greeted with cries of righteous horror - and smirks - I didn't think of them as being particularly excessive. God knows what I did think was excessive at the time, but I didn't think they were.

I'm uncertain, with horror fans, when is disturbing just disturbing, and when is it fun disturbing?

For horror, the needs of the story have to be first.

Fast cutting, loud music, blood spewing everywhere, and gunshots permeating the scenes does not necessarily make for a shocking movie.

Inevitably, the flood of literary pornography loosed on us is dulling our reactions of surprise or shock. Its writers are forced to raise the ante, to provide stronger and stronger stimulants. Or try to provide them, since both the manner, the naming of parts and the few inexpressive four-letter words, and the matter, are narrowly limited.

When I'm filming a kill scene [as a director], I just get happier and happier as we chop up body parts.

The bar for being shocking doesn't even exist anymore. What am I going to do to shock people? Seriously, try to get The Fisting Musical off the ground? Its really at this point, there is no bar.

There is something about the photographs that is endlessly disturbing. The fact that we like to think of them as torture actually hides what is really deeply offensive about them.